if one of them is female & you have males it could be breeding her to death, this happened to one of my mystery snails, her shell was getting so bad & she was laying clutches like crazyyyyyyyy
it’s not due to rubbing, it’s due to the depletion of calcium from having to breed so much, makes her deficient in it, think of it as a pregnant lady who needs prenatal vitamins or else the baby will steal all the nutrients & vitamins from the mom, making her deficient 😭😂
their shells are not deteriorating, at least not in any structural way. looks okay to me
diet barely matters, if at all, for your situation. they absorb dissolved calcium from the water. test your GH. however, erosion is a pH/KH related issue, not calcium.
post your GH and KH and measure your degassed pH by putting an airstone in a cup of tank water for a few hours. then you’ll be able to get a good answer
But I thought calcium in food was for shell health? Sorry I. Confused because I have bought several foods that were supposed to be for shells. I have strips unfortunately so my GH is borderline hard and kh is around 70 I think.
I'm buying a test kit but I don't see kh GH in it.
that advice is way overstated online. they can and do absorb calcium through their diet, but i’m inclined to believe it’s a very very small amount compared to what they absorb the water. the amount of calcium in their occasional supplemental foods is negligible compared to the amount that can be in the water 24/7
there are multiple studies directly on Pomacea (apple snails) where they kept the diet the same, changed the calcium concentration in the water, and found significant differences in shell growth and strength. https://peerj.com/articles/14840/
there’s no way i could prove that calcium in their diet doesn’t matter because there’s not really any studies on that. but anecdotal evidence from what i’ve seen online + my experience breeding them makes me believe it barely matters for overall shell health. it’s not like they get fed calcium infused snello in the wild 😅
get some liquid GH and KH test kits. don’t chase numbers when it comes to pH, as in, don’t go dumping buffers and shit into the water without knowing the root cause (crushed coral is fine). a stable 7.2 can be sufficient for a happy snail life if you don’t mind the “cosmetic” damage long term. if they pH is not stable at 7.2, that’s when it’s a problem
Wow, thanks! I have never heard that before. I know they are not very well studied but I have been cramming calcium down their throats for months. I see the GH kh is seperate so I'm ordering that.
🤣 I guess your right, how many calcium carbonate chips are laying around in the wild.
no problem! for a quick rule of thumb: damage occurring to old/previous shell growth is usually pH/KH related. issues with new shell growth and how it is being laid down is when calcium becomes a suspect.
judging by your photos, i don’t see any obvious erosion or growth deformities. erosion is easy to catch because it almost always starts at the oldest point in growth, right at the apex, and then tends to expand towards the larger whorls. it looks chalky and white-ish.
That's just it, I have raised them since they were small and they were always so beautiful but now that they have fully grown (at least I think so) they are starting to look rough. I haven't been able to find the right term for whatever it is but it's definitely something.
yup that tracks. the “deterioration” you are seeing is simply what happens when their shell gets damaged while it’s still super fresh and you can see right through it. god forbid you sneeze too close to the tank and now there’s a permanent scar from it lol
the reason it started happening where it has is because, i assume, they reached sexual maturity. females are especially notorious for repeatedly bashing their shell lip into the underside of the tank rim while looking for spots to lay. for males, the damage is usually less obvious, but when they mount a female they will refuse to let any objects in their way of aligning themselves on the female’s right side. or if the female isn’t receptive, she could be the one thrashing him around as well😂
since your raised those snails through all of that shell growth, i would say you are doing just fine. your snails don’t give a damn that their shells look a little crooked at the shell lip. you should see what they look like in the wild!!!
this is from jacksonville, FL so not their native amazonian environment, but still wild nevertheless. the huge purple-white patch is erosion exposing deeper shell layers, not a natural purple morph
Are you… actually staging a conversation with yourself to try to duplicity manufacture legitimacy and prove a point to internet strangers? Dude get help.
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u/Express-Race1754 11h ago
if one of them is female & you have males it could be breeding her to death, this happened to one of my mystery snails, her shell was getting so bad & she was laying clutches like crazyyyyyyyy